Newsroom

BLOG

The Importance of Setting Goals While Grieving

byJan Borgman, MSW, LISW-S, FT

Twenty years ago, a dear friend experienced the most unimaginable loss as her husband and two daughters were killed in a house explosion and she was seriously injured. In addition to losing her family, every material item she had was destroyed except for the wedding ring that she was wearing.

She was placed in a medically induced coma for weeks in order to allow her body to begin healing. The funeral for her husband and daughters took place two weeks after the explosion when it became evident that she would not be able to attend the funeral. His family needed to deal with their grief and to put to rest their son and grandchildren.

As time passed, my friend awoke from the coma but she still faced extreme health issues. As she became more alert and started to ask questions, information was carefully shared in small increments. Photos, documentation and videos were kept in case they were needed to help her understand and grasp what had happened. Medical decisions needed to be made regarding her own health. Her family and the medical team wanted her be involved as much as possible as her future and the quality of her life were at stake.

Two months after the explosion and still receiving medical treatment, she had a decision to make. In order to save her life and speed up the healing process, the doctors recommended amputation of her legs, which despite their best efforts, were not healing. She had been told and was able to understand that her beloved high school sweetheart and her two precious daughters had died in the explosion. There was no house to go home to and everything she owned was destroyed in the fire that followed the explosion. The debris from the house had been removed and all that remained was an empty lot. And now, she had to make a decision about her own life.

I sat with her in her pain and the most in-depth conversations took place in the quiet of the night. She wanted someone else to make the decision but her parents, family and medical team could only make recommendations as the ultimate decision had to be hers. And the real decision for her was “do I want to live? Can I live with all the loss and pain?”

She asked me to lead a prayer for all those who were gathered in her room for the care conference. We didn’t share the same faith but at that moment faith would guide the decisions that needed to be made. She made the decision to have the surgery. She would learn how live the life she never imagined.

Setting goals became part of her physical and mental healing.

Those goals, while hard, painful and at times frustrating, lead her to the point of learning to care for herself. A year to the day after the explosion, she found a handicap accessible apartment and moved out of her parent’s home. The physical healing was occurring.

But now, the real challenge of learning to live her life began. She told me “I’m giving myself five years, either I’ll learn to deal with this and find meaning in my life or all of this will be in vain.” And so the process began.

She watched the video of the funeral for her husband and daughters, and she cried as if it had just happened. She went to see where her home once stood, now an empty, lifeless lot. She settled with the insurance company and sold the lot. She learned how to walk with her new legs and how to drive a car with hand controls. She built a house to meet her needs and returned to work full time. She became involved with a children’s charity in memory of her two precious daughters and helped families learn to live with physical challenges after an injury.

On the 6th anniversary of the explosion, she went to the cemetery for the first time. This was the end of her “5 year plan.” She shared with me that she couldn’t go to the cemetery earlier for many reasons but one of the main reasons was she was afraid that she would give up learning to live without them if she felt they were at peace while she struggled to learn to live without them.

Her family and a few friends walked with her to the grave site and cried with her. Then we left her alone. She sat at the site for almost an hour. And we painfully, patiently waited for her, not knowing if we should check on her. Then finally she motioned for us to join her. She shared with us that she told them about her journey and all she had accomplished in the past 6 years. And her biggest accomplishment was that she was still living and that she had learned to build a life for herself.

As I sat with her later in the day, I reminded her about giving herself 5 years. And she shared that without that goal she wouldn’t have survived. So many times she wanted to give up and to stop feeling the physical and emotional pain of all she had gone through.

“And then I would remind myself that it had only been 2 years or 3 years and that I needed to be patient with myself. If I hadn’t given myself that time, I wouldn’t have been able to survive. Everyone wanted me to be “better” or be grateful that I was still alive. I had to find and accept that reality for myself. I was grieving the death of my dearest friend- the father of my children as well as my two beautiful daughters. I had to stop being angry that I survived and I needed to find a way to honor my husband and daughters. And I knew that would take time.”

It’s been twenty years since life changed forever for my dear friend. She is a remarkable example of resiliency in the face of adversity. She has her moments as she experiences lost life events, but she continues to set goals for herself and often remarks to me, “I gave myself 5 years and I look where I’m at today!” An inspirational reminder about being patient in the midst of grief and the importance of setting realistic goals and timelines when learning to live with loss.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jan Borgman, MSW, LISW-S, FT, is the Clinical Program Manager for Bereavement Services at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is a Fellow in Thanatology (FT) through the Association of Death Education and Counseling. Jan has been providing bereavement-related services and programs for over twenty-five years. Jan facilitates bereavement support groups in her community. She is a frequent speaker on the topic of grief and loss in the community and has been a presenter for national organizations such as the Association of Death Education and Counseling (ADEC), the Association for Oncology Social Work (AOSW) and for the Society of Social Work Leaders in Health Care (SSWLC).

Privacy Policy

What Information Do We Collect?
When you visit our website you may provide us with two types of information: personal information you knowingly choose to disclose that is collected on an individual basis and website use information collected on an aggregate basis as you and others browse our website.

Personal Information You Choose to Provide
We may request that you voluntarily supply us with personal information, including your email address, postal address, home or work telephone number and other personal information for such purposes as correspondence, placing an order, requesting an estimate, or participating in online surveys.
If you choose to correspond with us through email, we may retain the content of your email messages together with your email address and our responses. We provide the same protections for these electronic communications that we employ in the maintenance of information received by mail and telephone.

Website Use Information
Similar to other websites, our site may utilize a standard technology called "cookies" (see explanation below, "What Are Cookies?") and web server logs to collect information about how our website is used. Information gathered through cookies and server logs may include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our website, and the sites visited just before and just after ours. This information is collected on an aggregate basis. None of this information is associated with you as an individual.

How Do We Use the Information That You Provide to Us?
Broadly speaking, we use personal information for purposes of administering our business activities, providing service and support and making available other products and services to our customers and prospective customers. Occasionally, we may also use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our website, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. The lists used to send you product and service offers are developed and managed under our traditional standards designed to safeguard the security and privacy of all personal information provided by our users. You may at any time to notify us of your desire not to receive these offers.

What Are Cookies?
Cookies are a feature of web browser software that allows web servers to recognize the computer used to access a website. Cookies are small pieces of data that are stored by a user's web browser on the user's hard drive. Cookies can remember what information a user accesses on one web page to simplify subsequent interactions with that website by the same user or to use the information to streamline the user's transactions on related web pages. This makes it easier for a user to move from web page to web page and to complete commercial transactions over the Internet. Cookies should make your online experience easier and more personalized.

How Do We Use Information Collected From Cookies?
We use website browser software tools such as cookies and web server logs to gather information about our website users' browsing activities, in order to constantly improve our website and better serve our users. This information assists us to design and arrange our web pages in the most user-friendly manner and to continually improve our website to better meet the needs of our users and prospective users.
Cookies help us collect important business and technical statistics. The information in the cookies lets us trace the paths followed by users to our website as they move from one page to another. Web server logs allow us to count how many people visit our website and evaluate our website's visitor capacity. We do not use these technologies to capture your individual email address or any personally identifying information about you.

Notice of New Services and Changes
Occasionally, we may use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our website, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. As a user of our website, you will be given the opportunity to notify us of your desire not to receive these offers by clicking on a response box when you receive such an offer or by sending us an email request.

How Do We Secure Information Transmissions?
When you send confidential personal information to us on our website, a secure server software which we have licensed encrypts all information you input before it is sent to us. The information is scrambled en route and decoded once it reaches our website.
Other email that you may send to us may not be secure unless we advise you that security measures will be in place prior to your transmitting the information. For that reason, we ask that you do not send confidential information such as Social Security, credit card, or account numbers to us through an unsecured email.

How Do We Protect Your Information?
Information Security -- We utilize encryption/security software to safeguard the confidentiality of personal information we collect from unauthorized access or disclosure and accidental loss, alteration or destruction.
Evaluation of Information Protection Practices -- Periodically, our operations and business practices are reviewed for compliance with organization policies and procedures governing the security, confidentiality and quality of our information.
Employee Access, Training and Expectations -- Our organization values, ethical standards, policies and practices are committed to the protection of user information. In general, our business practices limit employee access to confidential information, and limit the use and disclosure of such information to authorized persons, processes and transactions.

How Can You Access and Correct Your Information?
You may request access to all your personally identifiable information that we collect online and maintain in our database by emailing us using the contact form provided to you within the site structure of our website.

Do We Disclose Information to Outside Parties?
We may provide aggregate information about our customers, sales, website traffic patterns and related website information to our affiliates or reputable third parties, but this information will not include personally identifying data, except as otherwise provided in this privacy policy.

What About Legally Compelled Disclosure of Information?
We may disclose information when legally compelled to do so, in other words, when we, in good faith, believe that the law requires it or for the protection of our legal rights.

Permission to Use of Materials
The right to download and store or output the materials in our website is granted for the user's personal use only, and materials may not be reproduced in any edited form. Any other reproduction, transmission, performance, display or editing of these materials by any means mechanical or electronic without our express written permission is strictly prohibited. Users wishing to obtain permission to reprint or reproduce any materials appearing on this site may contact us directly.

Terms & Conditions

Donation Refund Policy

We are grateful for your donation and support of our organization. If you have made an error in making your donation or change your mind about contributing to our organization please contact us. Refunds are returned using the original method of payment. If you made your donation by credit card, your refund will be credited to that same credit card.

Automated Recurring Donation Cancellation

Ongoing support is important to enabling projects to continue their work, so we encourage donors to continue to contribute to projects over time. But if you must cancel your recurring donation, please notify us.